As with theaters everywhere, South Coast Repertory and its audiences have begun readjusting to pre-pandemic schedules of live productions. The venerated regional company is ringing in the new year with the children’s musical “Last Stop on Market Street.”
Opening Jan. 16 and slated for a run of four performances, the show is the lone 2021-22 season production in SCR’s Theatre for Young Audiences and Families series.
Of particular note is that the show is directed by Oanh Nguyen, the founding artistic director of Chance Theater in Anaheim. At least in Orange County, crossover between small companies like Chance and behemoths like SCR is a rarity.
But since 2009, Nguyen has had a hand in multiple SCR shows over a range of programs and series, like its youth theater shows, StudioSCR stagings, NewSCRipts readings and Segerstrom Stage productions. And the basis for his involvement has been the interest SCR co-founder Martin Benson took in Nguyen in the late ’00s.
Chance got onto Benson’s radar as the company was completing its first decade. Their paths crossed, Benson recognized a diamond in the rough, and a working relationship developed that has also become a friendship. While it’s not clear whether referring to Nguyen as Benson’s protégé is accurate, what is clear is that Benson helped nurture Nguyen’s talents and became, in effect, the younger man’s mentor.
Benson has been paying it forward, in effect, for decades now. Nguyen notes that he isn’t alone in having received wisdom and guidance from Benson.
